


Unseen Terrors

by miasmatrix



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Cthulhu Mythos, Gen, I Blame Tumblr, John and Sherlock solve a case, Lovecraftian, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Murder, Mystery, Octopus, Sorry Not Sorry, Untold Cases of Sherlock Holmes, a bit outside the series, but just octopodes in the actual sense, locked room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-26
Updated: 2014-02-26
Packaged: 2018-01-13 20:58:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1240612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miasmatrix/pseuds/miasmatrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A case is all Sherlock needs to get rid of his winter depression, John thinks. When two scientists are murdered on a remote island, they rush to investigate. Something else is waiting for them there, though, and it's waking up.</p><p>(People say you should write fiction, above all, for yourself. I've always wondered how Sherlock would react to Cthulhu, and I think I'll explore that a bit more. Here's their first encounter. I'm so sorry. *slinks off and hides underneath some, uh, kelp* )</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Scillies are nice this time of the year

Hell Bay. What a name.

John felt a moment of disorientation when he stepped off the helicopter, a moment that stretched and stretched until it vanished. After the dizzying flight through low clouds and fog that seamlessly transformed into a still, patient sea, the ground felt unreal and a little wobbly. All around, the heather and whin and pale yellow sedge undulated in the storm the helicopter had kicked up, and for a brief moment, John found himself in the middle of an enormous ocean, drowning in heather, while the fog and sea around him provided the only solidity anywhere. He clutched his backpack closer and ducked his head even lower while the copter shrieked and departed. Sherlock, though, had no such issues and already strode towards the village.

The village. Several low houses all but obscured by the fog, thatched roofs in good repair, friendly signs promising food and drink and soft beds with crisp white linens (in the summer, but this was winter, and this wasn't even their final destination). Nobody had come to greet them, even though their entry couldn't have come unnoticed. Was there anyone even left on this island? John realized he had forgotten to check with Sherlock if Mycroft or Lestrade had actually booked a room for them. He guessed it was too late to check for that now.

Sherlock's hair curled even more in the fog, folding and unfolding with every step its owner took as if the fog had breathed some sort of independent life into it, and he was surrounded by a halo of thick, moist, black curls by the time they reached the inn. He pushed them back from his brow constantly, annoyed by their Sherlockian stubbornness. When the inn's door opened, and when a tall man in his thirties wearing corduroy, a sensible wool sweater and a hipster beard with matching glasses opened the door, John was relieved. He didn't know what he had expected, but it wasn't a friendly man with a firm handshake.

"Usually, we wouldn't be open, but of course, we made an exception for you, Mr. Holmes", the friendly man said. "Dr. Watson. Do come in. I'm afraid the spa is closed this time of the year, but I do have the hot tub going. Do you care for a tour?" But Sherlock already scooted past the man and into the lobby, leaving John to deal with the formalities. A light breeze from the sea pushed fog past them, strangely damp and, where it followed John into the lobby, almost warm like the fishy breath of some massive beast.

They were the only guests, and the friendly man the only host. His name turned out to be Hersh Truro, and he was the owner as well as the maid, cook, and janitor this time of the year. John hoped either Mycroft of the NSY or both paid him well. The inn turned out to be more of a resort, complete with said spa, spacious lobby and restaurant, all deserted, and rooms that so effectively closed out the damp and the fog with their airy warmth that John felt the anxiety and disorientation lift for a moment. He dropped his pack and sat on the bed, admired the Hampton chic complete with fake fireplace, and drew the curtains on what would, once the fog had lifted, surely provide a spectacular ocean view. Then he lay back on the bed and realized he had dozed off only when Sherlock hammered on the door and John rose, reluctant, gritty-eyed and not ready for dinner. But dinner it was.

"I'm so, so sorry", said Mr. Truro. "This isn't our usual menu. Had I known at least a few more days in advance-"

"It's fine", interrupted Sherlock, fiddling with his phone, not even glancing at the pot and the plates Mr. Truro had put before them. "I'm sure it's fine."

"He's not much into food", John hastened to add, but apparently, that didn't do much to reassure Mr. Truro.

"Our crabs are a local delicacy. We catch them ourselves, and the catch never fails. Literally, never." Truro sounded heartbroken at that.

"It's global warming", offered John.

"That must be the reason." With a flourish, Truro opened the lid in a manner that reminded John uncomfortably of the soup scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

"Didn't you say the catch failed?" Sherlock sounded genuinely puzzled. John's mouth went dry.

"I assure you they're perfectly fine to eat", said Truro, while John tried to make sense of the assortment of claws and too many eyes that greeted him, and what would have been a lovely bunch of steamed crabs, if not for the obvious malformations.

"It's lovely, thank you", John managed, and reached for the bread.

 

Once Truro had retreated, Sherlock dumped one of the crabs onto his plate. It was crab-like, crab-sized, but unlike any species John had ever seen.

"You're not going to eat that", John hissed.

"John, John, John. You're putting far too much emphasis on appearances."

"Oh, am I? I'm not the one dressed in a suit."

Sherlock beamed a dazzling smile that told John he had just proved Sherlock's point.

"Don't eat that. Please."

"It's a crab. Probably a brown crab. That's their name, not a mere description by the way, though they are brown when alive. But look, the front claws are segmented. They should be rigid, one piece, not articulated. See this? This is the claw-bearing leg. The one where the most meat is. But it's so segmented it would be impossible to get any meat out of it. And look at the eyes. They should have two. But I can identify eyes here, here, here, and possibly here. And here's an antenna instead of a legs. This one... this one doesn't have any eyes, do you see that? John! Do you see this? It also has far too many legs, how many are there... Twenty-four. Without consulting literature, of course, the mobile reception is abominable, but I do think it shouldn't have this many."

"Sherlock."

"And this one, this is... I don't even know what this is. It's vaguely crab-like, but is that a horn?"

"Sherlock."

"Yes, John, I'm right here. I have to draw these, that's extraordinary. John, fetch my sketchbook."

"Sherlock, please. Don't dissect our dinner."

"You're not going to eat them. I'm not even hungry, meaning they're not dinner. They're specimens, John. I wonder if I can take some home."

John looked at Sherlock and at the small army of deformed crabs on his plate, and found he had lost interest even in the bread. Instead, he took a long draught of his mulled cider. Sherlock's eyes, on the other hand, gleamed. Finally, John thought, after weeks of drab November without a case and with supreme boredom settling on Baker Street like a pall, this case had come along and swept them both off in a wave of adrenaline. A double murder on a remote research station out on the Scillies. No tracks. Murders happened at high tide, but there was no trace of the murderer coming or leaving by boat. A locked room mystery out in the open. Mycroft had been supportive, and Lestrade had offered just enough resistance for Sherlock to take an interest in this case. John had hoped the sea and harsh weather would blow any winter depression right out of his friend's head. Instead, they had encountered heavy fog, an almost deserted island, and deformed crabs.

"Clearly, you won't tell me what's eating you, John", Sherlock said.

John tore his gaze away from his strangely deformed dinner. "A curious choice of words."

Stapled fingers, eyes far away, very dark in the dim light of the dining room. Sherlock's hair still seemed to move on its own, but maybe that was the cider.

"Do you think it's connected?"

"The crabs and the murders? Maybe."

"How?"

"Deformations such as these typically stem from chemical pollution. Maybe those researchers saw something they shouldn't have seen."

"Radioactivity?"

"Another possibility."

John pushed his crabs even further away.

"Don't be silly, John. Any radioactive contamination severe enough to endanger you would have come up now. Surely anything that causes such massive malformations."

Silence fell between them while Sherlock brooded over the crabs as if they held any answers. Without other guests, without a telly or even a radio going, all John could hear for a moment was the soft whoosh of the sea, muffled by the fog, and the soft thrumming of a machine somewhere far away, some sort of generator for the regular, rising and falling noise it made. Almost like a breath, John thought, like breath moving through Sherlock's hair, and he dismissed the thought immediately. The fog really did get to him.

"What's the matter, John?"

If I tell you, John thought, you'll think I'm mad, and you'll lose any residual respect you have for pedestrian idiot John Watson. The candle at the table (Angelo's, John thought, so long ago) chose that moment to sputter out and die, and the low light cast deep shadows over Sherlock's face. Your hair is writhing, John thought. I think you're turning into a monster. I think I'm going mad.

"I've had a long day and too much cider", John said, and his voice wasn't strangled at all. "Sorry, Sherlock, I'll retire. See you in the morning? Low tide is at nine." Sherlock only nodded, already far away, and with his eyes hidden in the dark, John wasn't sure he had even listened. Behind Sherlock, the hall yawned dark, and the thumping sound of the generator once again increased in volume. Must be the wind, John thought, but he shuddered nonetheless. Sherlock's still figure, stiff and motionless in his chair, wasn't any help either. It was almost as if he wasn't even there.

"Good. Okay. Goodnight."

Back in his room, John found someone had turned off the lights and opened the curtains, exposing an unobstructed view of sedge and sea. The fog was lifting, and a gibbous moon shone hugely on a seascape rendered strangely soft by wafting fog. John thought he could make out their destination, Samson, a small island south of here and until recently home to two murdered scientists. Now, at full tide, it was impossible to cross over on foot, but in the morning, they'd walk there. Across the ocean floor. A denser cloud floated across the moon and tipped the sea into darkness, but for a moment, Samson seemed illuminated by the moon alone, a lingering entity that had claimed two lives. John shuddered and drew the curtains.  
With the lights on, John relaxed. This has been a particularly strange evening, and there had been many strange evenings. But the lights overhead shone golden and reassuring, and after he had undressed and lain down in bed, the strangeness receded to nothing more than a feeling of vague discomfort, brought on by a long day of travel and too much cider. That cider was evil, John thought, and slept. The sound of the generator in the distance, swelling and ebbing in huge, gulping gasps, broke his rest and brought on nightmares, but John couldn't remember what he had dreamed when he woke up drenched.


	2. Samson

The next morning brought sun and a light breeze and the sound of gulls, and even if John had remembered any dreams, they would have faded into nothing. Coffee and toast in the morning, devoured while preparing for their trek, took care of any discomfort. Sherlock was his usual energetic self and mobbed John until he had finally packed both their things and checked out and packed some sandwiches for later and a thermos with coffee and shouldered the backpack. Sherlock, of course, carried the weight of the mission, and ran ahead. The island Samson, their destination, wasn't an island at low tide, and equipped with wellies, it would be a moderate walk across the sea floor.

 

"You should really do something about that generator", John said as they said their goodbyes, "Is it always that loud?"

"Generator?" Truro said, "We have an undersea cable."

"Strange. I was sure I heard a generator last night. Does anyone else on this island..."

"Listen", Truro interrupted him with enough urgency to make John's heart jump: "You might have heard something. I did not. And I think your friend there", he pointed to Sherlock, who stood at the shore, coattails flapping, "hasn't heard anything either. But as you heard something, you should consider turning around. People have always heard things on these islands. They're too close to the deeps, these islands. I can call the skycab, they'll pick you up within the hour. It's not too late."  
John stood and stared at the man in front of him whose face had changed somehow, had gone from the affable, harmless hipster to something else entirely. Something John couldn't quite put his finger on and didn't think he should...

"John! Catch up!" A shout from Sherlock broke the spell. Blame it on the sunshine, or on Sherlock marching ahead, John suddenly found the exchange so comically superstitious that he laughed, thanked Truro, and ran after Sherlock as fast as he could wearing Wellies and carrying a pack.

The water lapped at their boots when they finally reached the remote island. They'd crossed a stretch of sea that had fallen dry during low tide, the sea floor littered with the mounds of worms and small snails that had closed their shell and waited for the sea to return. The remains of a deformed brown crab floated in one of the few tide pools, picked at by a tiny hermit crab that retreated underneath a stone when the two men passed by. A chunk of seaweed full of sea pocks and mussels waved lazily in the tide pool as well, and John uncomfortably remembered the day before, and Sherlock's hair. To be fair, today Sherlock's hair hung limp with sweat and salt spray from their trek, which, to John, was an improvement.  
From the beach, just one small track led to the station. It was conveniently located on a tiny isthmus and leaned out over both parts of the sea, the gulf between the islands as well as the Atlantic to the west. Parts of it leaned on stilts, and when they passed below, Sherlock pointed out the big flap on the underside, now fallen dry, but with direct access to the sea once the tide would rise.

"Possible point of entry", John muttered. Sherlock just nodded and tried to lift the flap, but try as they might, they couldn't move it one bit.

"Probably bolted from the inside."

"Told you it's a locked room mystery, Sherlock."

Sherlock smiled one of his rare, open smiles, and nodded. "A nice find. Sad that two people had to die for us to travel to a seaside getaway."

"You make it sound like I murdered them just to get you out of London."

"Did you?"

"Hell, no! Wait. You'd have liked that."

"Maybe for Valentines?"

"I already murdered one person for you. Don't push your luck."

"That wasn't murder."

"Manslaughter then."

"Would you manslaughter me someone for Valentines then?"

"What's that sudden fixation with Valentines Day?"

"Oh. There we are. That's the entrance over there."

The station was deserted. Of course, its only two inhabitants had been murdered and, after their accidental discovery by the supply boat, taken away by the coroner. Sherlock had raged at that, had been adamant they needed to see the remains in situ to appreciate the crime scene fully. But of course, even with the temperatures as low as they were, leaving bodies inside the station hadn't been an option. He had to make do with a manila folder full of glossy high res pictures. John could just imagine the indignation at wrong angles and rage at fuzzy corners and too much flash and missed details Sherlock would dive into, and the thought made him smile.  
Sherlock turned the main breaker, and the station reverted to a half-lit life. Freezers started buzzing (John decided to open them, if at all, only after the spoiled contents had refrozen), the bare bulbs overhead lend their clinically white light, exposing metal grates on the floor, white metal walls, and a dark metal roof. Metal everywhere, easy to clean, but every step clanged and reverberated throughout the entire station. They left John's pack in the anteroom and stepped out of their wellies. The air was stale inside. The windows had been shuttered so that the only light emanated from the lights above.

A corridor led to the main room. A mess, John thought, not because it was cluttered, but because the entire structure reminded him of a ship. And if this was a ship, this was the mess. A metal table and six chairs, a row of kitchen appliances, several fridges, a pool table. On the table, two bowls of cereal had turned into mould and then dried, but that was it. They'd kept a tidy ship.  
From there, another corridor sprouted six small cabins right and left. Two had been used by the scientists, the other four were empty and a little dusty. At the end of the corridor lay the main lab. And that was where the two researchers had been murdered.

Owing to the nature of this place, the lab was bigger than the mess. John saw the typical layout, benches for six, cupboards overflowing with chemicals and solutions, several microscopes, microtomes, and large trays covered with wax where specimens had undoubtedly been analysed. But Sherlock didn't pay any of this any heed. He pounced on the site of the crime with an enthusiasm John found encouraging. That was the Sherlock he wanted to see, not the moping unwashed creature occupying their sofa for days on end.

"What do you see?"

Sherlock didn't answer, so John did his own survey. The crime scene was - fragmented, for a better word. Though they had cleaned up what they could, it was obvious there hadn't been just two bodies, but several... fragments. John counted over twenty markers.

"Have they been..."

"Yes." Sherlock snapped his magnifying glass shut and stood up, sweeping the room with one expansive gesture. "Martha Pitrushkina had been found here, here, here and here. She had to be identified using a DNA sample from her toothbrush in case you're wondering. Parts of her lower intestine had been found here. All mutilations post mortem. Raymond Abernathy has been found mostly in this area, but also on the wall there."

John swallowed. "Any idea how that could have happened?"

Sherlock leaned back, his eyes sweeping the crime scene a second time. Which was unusual.

"No... not so far."

He hopped over one of the lab benches to cross to the other side without moving the markers, squatted, and had another look at the grates where most of Abernathy had been found. He confiscated forceps from the bench and then, leaning in close, fished something from underneath the grates. Something small and shiny which he held out to John. "What do you think this is? A fingernail?"

"No, doesn't look like it. A fingernail would be translucent. And smaller."

"Could be painted. Or a fake nail."

"Possible, yes. There's blood on it. Whatever this is, it might lead us to the killer."

"Or maybe it's just a fish scale. Or a sea shell."

"Have a look at this lab, John, does this look like they'd drop anything and leave it there? It's so clean at least one of them must have a severe disorder."

"Not everyone who likes to keep a clean house has a disorder, Sherlock."

"Do you have to make every crime scene about our flat?"

"If it helps, yes."

"It won't", said Sherlock and placed the thing, whatever it was, under a microscope, "I will not be manipulated into spectacularily boring tasks by someone who clearly... well this is interesting."

"Who is clearly what?"

"Look at this, John. What do you see?"

John did look through the microscope then and saw something that reminded him of fishing with his father, back when he thought his family was normal, of the flutter of scales on a trout as it jumped. On the iridescence of fish and the phosphorescence of deep sea animals, and all of that packed in a - fish scale?

"Is that a fish scale?"

"It is. Now, how big do you think a fish must be if it has scales of this size?"

"Hard to say. Carps have pretty big scales."

"They do, don't they."

"Besides, if you're not suggesting they were beaten to death using a fish, I'm not sure how this is relevant to the murders."

"Astutely observed as always, John. Let's have a look at the other lab."

"The other lab?"

"Clearly, as none of the rooms we've seen so far has access to water, there must be another lab. And it must be - behind this cupboard here. Help me, will you."

Only then did John notice the scrape marks on the ground. Together, they shoved the cupboard back where it had come from, and it did indeed reveal another room, fully dark. The scent of the sea, of dead fish and salt and rotting sea weed was overwhelming here. Sherlock didn't hesitate one second, he vanished inside the room, leaving John alone in a room where two scientists had been brutally murdered just a few days ago. It was only when he suddenly realized he was alone that his hackles did rise. The room seemed to tilt towards the black entrance at the far side of the room, and it was as though something sucked the light out of this lab and John with it. He couldn't help himself, he felt drawn to the darkness, as if he was squeezed out of this room and into another. He found himself on the threshold and crossed over, dread curdling in his veins.

 

The room wasn't entirely dark. A hint of light fell through the trapdoor on the floor and reminded John that outside, the sun must be high in the sky by now and that the tide was coming in. The feeling of being watched was so strong in here John almost couldn't move. His every instinct told him to get out of the cone of light, find a dark place and hide, get his back against something solid. The entrance he had just come through felt worst - he knew there wasn't anything there, he hadn't passed anything, the front door was closed, so there couldn't be anything lurking behind him. But he had to fight the impulse to spin around and see whatever was staring down his neck.

"John?" Sherlock's voice almost made him jump out of his skin. "John, look at this."

Sherlock leaned over a row of fish tanks, each about two meters in length and dark. "They left their specimens here."

John did turn then, and immediately, the intense feeling of being watched dissolved. He had been watched. Inside each tank, an octopus the size of a basketball pressed itself against the glass to see who had come to visit. A display of curiosity he hadn't expected from an animal like this. He had to admit he found it oddly endearing.  
Sherlock's fingers danced across the controls and pressed and flipped switches, and one by one, the tanks and the overhead lights came back to life. With the lights on, the octopodes vanished into their caves and shelters. Colour rippled across their bodies as they darted to safety.

"The circulation must have been off for days now. Not ideal. We'll see if the tanks survive."

"We should set them free", said John, suddenly feeling sorry for an animal he usually encountered only in Mediterranean dishes, and wondering at himself.

"We don't know what they're for, they might be an experiment. Better not set them free until we know what's up with them. And besides, maybe they're not native."

"Rabbits and Australia", mused John.

"Rabbits?"

"Never mind."

Sherlock rummaged around in shelves and cupboards and examined the lab bench closely, stopping just short of going over it with a loupe. From below, the whoosh of the incoming sea could be heard, and the scent of salt and sea became stronger by the second. "This must be where they undertook most of their behavioural experiments", Sherlock mused. "I wonder why they chose to hide this lab."

John found he had stared at the trapdoor for the longest time. His gaze must have caught on the twinkle of sea just visible through the cracks, impossibly bright even against the glaring overhead fluorescent lights. With great effort, he recalled what Sherlock had just said, and found he strongly disagreed.

"They didn't hide it", he said. "They tried to keep something out."

"An interesting theory", Sherlock said, sounding distracted. He had discovered something vastly more interesting: A neat stack of leather-bound journals, neatly labelled with dates and names, sitting on a sideboard right next to the tanks. If anything had happened here that could shed some light on the gruesome murders, there was the definite possibility they'd find it in the journals.

"Why didn't they use computers", Sherlock wondered. "There's not a single computer in this entire complex. Who writes all of this by hand?" He flipped through the first journal and saw sketches, graphs, columns of numbers and rows upon rows of neat handwriting. Without another word, he slumped down at the desk and started to read.

John found he was both too wound up and too distracted to read. The sound of the ocean that filled the room had an almost hypnotizing quality to it. It would have been better, he thought, if he'd been able to open the windows to let the sun in, but massive metal shutters closed them in, and he found no way to open them. He drifted around the hidden laboratory, doing his own inventory. Five tanks lined one of the long walls, all set up almost identically with rocks, some kelp, an artificial shelter for the octopus, and several empty sea shells and snails. As John watched, one of the octopodes came out of his cave and swung itself in front of him. Colour rippled across its skin as if the animal couldn't decide whether to hide or to make itself known.  
"Shy, are you", John muttered. The octopus seemed to have heard him, it flashed brightly and dashed back into its cave. But only for a few seconds, then John spied a tentacle that grabbed the edge of the cave, and then, using that one and another tentacle as leverage, it swooped down in front of John. John smiled. The animal flashed blue and green and hovered in front of John, somehow - expectant.  
"You're hungry, hm?" John looked around. The freezer was out - whatever was in there was certainly spoiled. But on the far end of the room, just past the trapdoor, he found a smaller tank full of big fat shrimp that seemed to match the skins he had seen in the tanks. Using the net in front of it, he gathered several shrimp and distributed them between the tanks. His new friend pounced on the prey with a short flash of purple and red, vanquished the hapless shrimp and vanished inside the cave. John smiled. Several seconds later, it re-emerged, obviously excited, its big iridescent eyes fixed on John's net. "Want some more?" He had no idea how many shrimp an octopus usually ate, but he assumed two or three wouldn't be too much for a hungry animal. He caught more shrimp and distributed them, saving his new friend for last. The second shrimp went the way the first one did, fast and secretive, but for the next one, the octopus just retreated a bit, shoved the shrimp underneath its web where the beak was, and munched on it with visible glee while studying John. John had to smile.

"Found a new friend?"

John turned around to see Sherlock at the desk, skimming through the journals. "They're pretty smart."

"They're molluscs, John. Glorified snails."

"Smart snails."

"Leave them and help me with these journals."

John gave the octopus a wink and laughed as it retreated into its cave in a whirl of colour

 

It was late. Sherlock didn't have to look at the watch to know that. He could read it in John's sluggish movements, a deepening of the lines on his face. John didn't know this, but Sherlock was always aware of him. He just sometimes pretended he wasn't. Sherlock, while ostensibly reading the journals, which proved an unnecessary detailed report of unnecessarily boring experiments on the mental capacity of molluscs, studied John instead. He probably thought he read another journal, but his eyes didn't move. He had an absent-mindedness about him that was very unlike John. Of the two of them, it was John who was always right here, right in the moment, who didn't stray far from the foundations of life. That was what Sherlock found so reassuring, and that one reason why he was so drawn to him. He was an anchor. Today, though, he seemed... he seemed to drift.

He watched him feed the octopodes a late night snack, an absent smile lighting up his face. The animals responded to him, came out of their caves and displayed patterns Sherlock associated with agitation. Excitement. They seemed happy. John seemed happy. And then he sat down again, picked up the journal he probably truly believed he was reading, and his face sank, returning to an almost sullen expression. Sherlock made a decision and snapped the journal shut.

"This is no use", he sighed, a show of exasperation exclusively for John. "Too _detailed_ , too _boring_. And full of tide tables and weight and length of crabs and cephalopods and mussels and bio-phosphorescence and -luminescence and how the two differ in time with tide and seasons. Who was supposed to read this? You'd think they'd make this more interesting. Aren't scientists depended on funding? They could make a fortune selling interesting, well-written results to - someone!"

"I doubt that's what they had in mind here", said John.

"Still! Sitting in a box for days and weeks and months. It would drive anyone mad. I've already come _this_ close to murdering you just reading these."

"Mhm", said John, gazing at the tanks even though their illumination had switched itself off by timer long ago. Clearly, he wouldn't suggest calling it a day.  
Sherlock sighed. And then did something that hurt him almost physically: "It has been a long day, John. Let's turn in."

At that, John did look up, and the haze retreated somewhat. "Good. Great. Yes. Let's."


	3. A Complicated Man

Every little nook and cranny on these islands had been converted into holiday homes, Sherlock thought. The lighthouse was no exception. Though the researchers had slept inside the station, Lestrade had insisted they use the little lighthouse up on the only knoll Samson had to offer. Something about contaminating the crime scene which had offended Sherlock so much he had decided to delete the conversation, but it did come back to him in disturbing bits and pieces, and he kicked up sand on the way to the path. Such a waste of time, to be forced out of his crime scene and up the hill and across heather and sedge. To add insult to injury, it was dark, had been for a long time now, and the moon that hung over them provided tenuous illumination, barely enough to find their way. Sherlock decided some moping would be in order.  
  
"Sherlock."

Only when he heard John call his name did Sherlock realize John had fallen behind. The tone of John's voice made Sherlock freeze in his tracks. He turned to see John stand at the water's edge, the sea lapping at his boots and drenching his trousers, but John was oblivious to that. He stared out to sea, his back to Sherlock, and in that strained, stifled tone he said again: "Sherlock. Can you see that?"

"See what, John?"

John was silent for a long time. Sherlock stepped closer to him, right to where the sea touched his feet. The cold crept into him so fast it hurt.

"Sherlock. Why does the sea glow?"

"The glow is usually attributed to dinoflagellates."

"No. I mean, why does the sea glow out _there_." He pointed to somewhere far out at sea. Sherlock strained, but all he could see was the faint glow of the moon on the calm water. Maybe once his eyes had adjusted...

"Do you see it?"

"It's the moon, John."

At that, John laughed, a short, dry laugh on the edge of panic. "No. No, that's not the moon. It's purple. And it's very bright." John turned to Sherlock, his eyes wide.

"Sherlock. Don't mess with me. Tell me you see this."

"I don't, John."

"Sherlock... Sherlock. I'm losing my mind."

"You are the most sensible man I know. You're not losing your mind."

John didn't speak, he looked out on the sea to something only he could see.

"I trust you, John. If you say there is something, then there is something."

At that, with obvious effort, John turned his back to the sea and all but ran up the knoll. Sherlock followed.  
  
  
  
Up at the lighthouse, the smell and sound of the sea wasn't as strong, the warm, earthy scents of heather and sedge grass dominated. And the lighthouse itself, frankly, exceeded Sherlock's expectations by far, having been converted into a tiny beach getaway after the lighthouse duty had been transferred to other, bigger sites further outside. Two tiny bedrooms and a bathroom clustered around a circular living room with kitchenette and an open fireplace. John clearly wasn't much use, he just barrelled into the place wide eyed and shaken, leaving Sherlock to start a fire. Which he did, and then he sat John, whose trousers were drenched up to his thighs, next to it while he stored their belongings. When he returned to the sitting room, John still sat like he had left him, shaking in short, fast tremors, and if it was the cold or anxiety, he couldn't tell.

"John", he said softly as if that fixed anything. "John." He knelt down next to him. "Let's get you out of these wet clothes." It attested to John's shaken state that he allowed Sherlock to remove John's boots and help him shove off the wet jeans that clung to him. John shook and shook, and Sherlock wrapped a blanket around him and rubbed his ice-cold legs until the life returned to them.  
"Thank you", John managed. "That's better."

Sherlock didn't think it was, John did have him worried, and he wanted to stay close and make sure he was warm and safe. But he knew John wouldn't like it if he fuzzed over him, he never did, and so Sherlock drew back with a small smile that told John this was okay, that he'd be here if he changed his mind.

"I'll see if we have warm water, maybe a hot shower will improve your - state."

"No. Thank you. I think I'll turn in. Just let me sit here for a moment. By the fire."

Sherlock ducked into the bedroom and made John's bed. The room was cosy enough and looked out on the heath, not on the sea, but Sherlock closed the curtains anyway. There wasn't much space, just the single bed, a small desk with a stool and a night stand with a small lamp on it, the curved wall was whitewashed, the ceiling made of ancient oak boards. Framed paintings of flowers, all more or less scientifically correct, decorated the walls. A nice, harmless place, Sherlock thought. Back in the living room, nothing had changed, though the fire slowly won the fight against the chill and damp they'd brought in.

Sherlock touched John's shoulder. "Come. You get the best room in the house." He all but walked him into the bedroom and sat him down on the bed, woollen blanket and all. John looked smaller somehow. Maybe he'd always been short, and Sherlock had never noticed, seen him for what he was instead, larger than life, stronger than all he knew, Sherlock included.

"Will you be okay?"

John nodded, or trembled, head low, and Sherlock, for once, was lost. _I don't know what to do, John,_ he thought, _I wish I knew. I'd be better for you if I did. But I'm here, and you're there, and there's space between us. And I know I can never say this out loud._  
"Let me know if you need anything", he said instead, clasped John's shoulder, just once.  
  
  
  
The next day, everything was spectacularly ordinary. The fog had left to make way for a bright, sunny December day, complete with hoar frost covering the sand and the heath that evaporated when the sun had climbed high enough. The night before seemed unreal to both John and Sherlock, and they both chose not to mention it. Breakfast was fast and perfunctory, just tea and cereals and an apple each, which was more Sherlock usually ate anyway. And then they made their way down to the station. The only thing out of the ordinary was that John did actually stop to lock the front door of their little holiday home.  
  
After the brightness at the beach, the station seemed exceptionally gloomy. Even Sherlock lost his usual energy when they passed the first lab with its gruesome markers, and John dragged himself along, only cheering up when he saw the octopodes and their tanks had survived the first night with circulation, and were fine and hungry. He fed them and commented on their excited colour display with excitement of his own until Sherlock came over and shoved a pack of journals into his hands. Jealous, are we, John thought, but knew better than to ask. He just smiled and sat down opposite Sherlock, journal and notebook ready, and was just about ready to start reading when he noticed he was able to see the tanks from here, just behind Sherlock. His eight-legged friend in the tank closest to them clung to a piece of rock, his eyes raised above Sherlock's shoulder, and seemed to watch them both. John winked, and ripples of green and blue appeared on the animal and vanished in a heartbeat. He could have sworn it had just winked back.

"Are you flirting?" Sherlock asked without looking up.

"Yes. That I am."

"With the octopus behind me."

"Indeed."

"John Watson. You are a complicated man."

At that, John laughed, which in turn made Sherlock smile, and John thought what a wonderful idea it had been to come here, all things considered.  
  



	4. The Sleeper

The journals proved to be hard to read. Not because biology wasn't their speciality - chemistry and medicine were close enough so they could understand what the researchers had been up to. It was just that both sets were written in neat, small handwriting and littered with annotations and remarks that must have been completely obvious to both of them but did nothing for John and Sherlock. John's set dealt with behavioural experiments in the cephalopods he'd befriended, with their ability to distinguish colour and express colours on clue when rewarded with food. Simple experiments yielding inconclusive and confusing results - the researchers hadn't even found which food they liked best. "The food kind", said a side note with a smiley next to it. Octopodes might be something like the gourmands, not the gourmets, of the sea, said another note in a furious scribble.  
Sherlock's set wasn't much use either. Whatever had happened, it might not have had anything with their research at all. Wait. Maybe there was. John consulted his notes and said: "Maybe animal rights activists."

"Excuse me?"

"Maybe they were killed by animal rights activists. They conducted animal experiments. It happens."

Sherlock turned around to where the octopus was still watching them and frowned. The animal chose that moment to slink away. Clearly, Sherlock wasn't a friend. "They killed the researchers but didn't set the animals free?"

"Good point. Well. I don't see anything in here that points to a reason."

"Neither do I", sighed Sherlock. "Let's have another look at the photos."  
  
They spent the rest of the day poring over glossy, gory photos of the crime scene. As John had suspected, Sherlock spent an extraordinary amount of time complaining about the quality of the images, about missing data and scenes cut off randomly. They did, however, show one thing: When the researchers had been killed, the cupboard had already been in front of the door. That was abundantly clear from the string of intestine glued to the wall and the cupboard by drying blood, not unlike a Do-not-cross line. Whatever they had meant to do, keep something in or keep something out, it hadn't saved them. John wondered what it was.  
  
"Hm", said Sherlock.

"Hm what?"

But Sherlock's mind was already somewhere else entirely, and it wasn't a surprise when he did jump up and darted away in a dash of coat-tails.  
"Want me to follow?" John asked to what he knew was empty air. "No. Okay. Thought I'd offer anyway. I'm here if you need me, reading journals."  
  
  
With Sherlock gone, the lab seemed much more - spacious. Vast, even. Empty. Though, to be honest, Sherlock didn't take up much space, but he seemed to fill the room even when he was very still. Even asleep, he was able to occupy more space than he should have. John felt his stomach drop and resisted the urge to run after Sherlock. He wouldn't make a fool out of himself. He was perfectly capable of staying in this lab on his own and do the work he was supposed to do. So he swallowed the weird anxiety that had come over him, and picked up the next journal.

A few seconds later, the feeling of being watched, of something enormous creeping up on him, was so overwhelming he actually spun around and looked, but there wasn't anything. Nothing but the tanks full of friendly octopodes and the trapdoor. The trapdoor. Why was that of any significance? They had made sure it was bolted, the only way it could be opened was by pulling the two steel bolts and dropping the hatch, and there was no way anyone who wasn't inside with him just now could do that. And apart from five friendly molluscs, there wasn't anyone in here with him. Then why did his breathing sound that loud? Then why did his palms sweat? Why did he feel like he was on the edge of a major anxiety attack? Nerves. That's why.  
Still, John took Sherlock's chair instead and set it up against the solid steel of the wall, putting the most massive structure at his back. On his left, the tank provided some cover, to the right, he was just able to watch the door out of the corner of his eye, and further on the left loomed the trapdoor. No way anything could creep up on him like that. Reassured, he picked up the journal, began to read, and made notes on his notepad.  
  
He had skimmed through dozens of pages of descriptions of even more behavioural experiments when movement to his left, just out of the corner of eye, caught his attention. He looked up and saw the octopus. "Hey, little fellow." He cringed - that had been a mistake. The octopus answered with a colour display John associated with friendly greeting, but John's voice seemed to reverberate inside the steel box that was the lab, and had disturbed a careful equilibrium. Had made something aware of him.  
The octopus flashed again, red with dots of white in a display that was so jarring against the drab contents of the tank, and so different from what it usually displayed that John knew it had to be a threat display. It paled to greenish-brown immediately and darted off to hide in his cave. A second later, it re-emerged, positioned itself in front of John, flashed red, and vanished again.  
John was mesmerized. "I don't know what you're trying to tell me, sorry", he murmured. The animal scuttled closer to the glass as though that would somehow get the meaning across easier, flashed, its skin raised, tentacles curled in frustration, then took great care to mimic the surroundings, and vanished into its cave. And again, slower, with even more emphasis. Like someone talking in a different language, despairing he couldn't be understood, and expressing the same sentence again in the same strange language, just slower. John stood, at a loss.  
  
The moment he had stood up, the feeling of dread he had experienced last night at the beach returned, magnified a thousand times. His gaze caught on the trapdoor and somehow ventured beyond, and it was only then he noticed the strong stench of sea and brine and wrack and decaying fish and death, the odour of a massive beast breathing in unison with the sea below. Suddenly, the stench was so strong John felt he couldn't breathe, couldn't move, he knew he must, he had to move, his legs wouldn't move, couldn't carry himself through the curdling radiance. His arm seemed to stretch until he caught hold of the locker by the door and dragged himself over where he slunk inside, latching the door with shaking fingers, hiding like a mouse, quiet, quiet, quiet now, don't make a sound don't move don't breathe and then it was on him, foul breath, purulent and vile and grinding and pounding like a machine come to life. Through the slits in the locker door he could just see a lumbering brightness impossibly solid and ethereal at once, and he averted his eyes, covered his head with his arms, crouched down and shrunk into the farthest corner of the locker because this, this was peril to not only his sanity but his very soul, this assaulted everything he knew and took for granted, every belief down to the very cells of his mammalian body.  
  
And just like that, it was gone.  
  
John cowered in the locker for what seemed eternity, not daring to make a sound, not daring to move. Eventually, when nothing happened and the soft lapping of the sea below remained the only sound, he dared to open his eyes and peered outside. He saw the lab, brightly lit by overhead lights, undisturbed. Empty. The oppressive fear that had so affected him gone, he found he was able to unlatch the door and leave his hiding place. From the tank, his octopus friend observed him warily, a few arms holding on to the cave entrance as if to drag himself back in an instant. John took a step into the room as if not trusting the ground. The trapdoor remained bolted shut. Nothing pointed to anything entering at all. But what had he seen then? Had he even seen anything? He recalled a similar occurrence in a laboratory in Baskerville, of sheer terror and strong hallucinations. Was that the case here as well? Something in the fog? That had to be it. Suspicious that Sherlock should be off again just when John saw a monster. Yet again. That had to be it, some vicious experiment of Sherlock's to see if John's ordinary brain reacted any different from his own.

John realized he worked up his anger, but that was vastly preferable to the terror he had felt before. He'd ask Sherlock, he decided. Ask him nicely. No accusations. Just a simple question. Yes. He'd do that. John walked over to the chair he had left, picked up his notepad which he had dropped and dropped it again - it was dripping with a clear substance that felt at once dry and slimy, as if it sublimated the moment he touched it, as if it slid past his skin and into his body, and for an instant, he tasted fish and brine and worse on his tongue, he spit, retched, his hands on his knees, doubled over and retched and heaved without result. When he looked back up, his vision blurred by tears, the stain on his fingers was gone and the notepad on the floor was dry. The only indication that something had been there were the marks where the graphite had been subtly smeared by fingers too big to exist, three circular dots as if from suckers or a chinless mouth. In horror, John read the lines the marks had smudged:  
  
 _beware the sleeper and the goat beware the creeper and the kelp dance phosphorescent desolation a glutton moon will break the bonds the black goat's thousand young skitter in the depths the many-handed will be freed_  
  
He threw the pad away as if stung and fled the lab. Outside, the sharp cold air hit him like a slap. Indigo dusk had fallen, the sun only a faint orange memory on the horizon. He rushed away from the lab, just away, tripped on something and went sprawling, face down in the ice-cold sand and in - something, something that smelled of phosphorus and hot brake discs and wafted up from a depression in the sand. John scrambled to his feet and gaped at the monstrous prints in the sand in front of him, enormous three-pronged indentations surrounded by a halo of tassels, only one set at first, but as he looked up, there were more, a trail really, leading up to the station and back to the sea as if something, something immense and three-legged had emerged from and returned to sea. John scrambled up and back from them and found he couldn't breathe, couldn't scream even though that was exactly what he thought he should at this moment, because the trace was so fresh the impressions made by tentacly fringes crumbled before his eyes. Whatever had made these couldn't be far, and so he ran.

Sherlock. He had to find Sherlock. Sherlock would know what to do. He was halfway down the beach when he saw a dark figure some distance on the beach south of him, and by then his run was slowed by deep sand but no less frantic. "Sherlock!" The figure turned, and in that moment he saw nothing but darkness where his friend should be, an empty coat and hair that moved on its own. He dropped and skidded to a halt on his knees before the horrific apparition, and only then the figure resolved into Sherlock, his face set in a friendly smirk.

"John! How kind of you to join me. I didn't think you'd miss me quite that much though."  
  



	5. Fight or Flight

The look on John's face gave Sherlock pause. He'd seen John dash down the beach but had been too occupied with his analysis of tide marks on the rocks to pay him much heed. John did so many random things all day. Who could keep up! It was one of the reasons he was never boring. He took a step towards his friend and saw him cringe away, so he dropped into a crouch and studied him closely. John obviously tried to get his breathing under control, but he was terrified beyond all reason.

"John", he said, "What happened?" He held out a hand and dropped it a moment later - what had he expected John to do, snif it? Press his head against it? So Sherlock stood, trying to lead by example. "Show me, John. Come. Show me."

They walked back, following John's erratic footprints. John's face worked visibly, he was obviously trying to process something and trying to decide what to tell. This was bound to be fascinating. Not so much what he said, Sherlock said, but what he omitted. Though that would be hard to deduce.

"I saw something", John confessed.

"What did you see?" Sherlock kept his voice carefully neutral. No need to send John into another bout of panic.

"I don't know."

By the time they'd returned to the station, it was almost completely dark, just a hint of light blue on the horizon and the moon overhead, almost full. The tide had come in, John saw. The tide. Had come in. And mostly covered the tracks.

"It was here", he said. "They were here, a lot of them. Tracks. Huge tracks."

"Footprints."

"Footprints, yes, but - not feet. Here. Look. Here's one of them."

"That's... just a depression in the sand."

"It was far bigger, and there were three of them. Three feet, circular, about one meter across, maybe larger. Here, can you see this?"  
Sherlock squinted, but in the wan light, it was extremely hard to see anything at all. But yes, maybe there was something, a faint line of tracks leading in and out of the ocean.

"You see it, don't you?"

"I see something, but I cannot tell you what it is yet."

"But you see it."

"...yes. I see a row of slight depressions that might be prints."

At that, John straightened and relaxed visibly, and Sherlock realized that he hadn't believed Sherlock would see it to. He had thought he was suffering from delusions. No wonder he was so shaken.

"That's not all I saw", he managed.

"What else? Monsters?" Sherlock had meant to lighten the mood, but clearly, that hadn't gone over well, as John withdrew visibly. _Monsters? Really?_

"Sorry, John. Tell me. Do you think this is relevant to our investigation?"

"Relevant to- relevant to our investigation?"

"Yes. Do you think something came from the ocean and murdered-"

"No. No. I don't think that."

"Well, it's not all that far-fetched, considering your-"

"My what?"

Now he'd done it, Sherlock thought. Now he had finally done it. John had tipped from panic into aggression, and Sherlock should have known because he always, always did that. He smiled. Tough, brave John.

"No, Sherlock, don't look at me like that. Don't give me that attitude."

"Attitude. This attitude, would that be a thorough analysis of the facts before me? This is what I do, John."

Not a good move. John's jaws were set now, chewing, and he was glaring up at Sherlock. "Never mind", he said, and turned to walk up to the lighthouse.  
Sherlock ran after him. "John, I'm sorry. I just think we should take a step back and analyse what we see."

"You don't see anything, Sherlock", John said, walking towards the lighthouse angrily. John had angry walking down to an art.

"Then tell me."

"Just to have you make fun of me? No thanks."

Sherlock reached him and grabbed a handful of sweater and managed to turn him around. "I'd never make fun of you, John." John jerked free of Sherlock's hand and continued walking. "You're invaluable, John, especially because you see things I don't. But you have to admit that it's a rare occurrence, and you have to give me some time to adjust-"

"Of course", John said, stopping, turning around.  "Of course. It's so unusual I see something you don't for a change. I notice something you don't, and suddenly, it's not relevant. It's not even there! I see something and it's a delusion. You see something and it's a clue. Do you realize how degrading that is? No. No, I didn't think you do."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't - wait, I never said I thought you're delusional."

"You don't have to say it. It's on your face, clear as day."

"Hm, well, I might have thought it but-"

"Just - stop - it." Sherlock felt John's angry finger poke his breastbone. The angry finger usually was a clear indicator that John was about to leave the flat, but in this case, outside, Sherlock didn't know what John's course of action would be. "I'm going up to the lighthouse. And you-" the angry finger poked him again - "you do whatever you want, but you're not going up to the lighthouse with me. You'll give me space. Just this once."  
He turned and left, and Sherlock had experienced enough angry John to know when to give in. He watched John's slumped figure until he reached the house and vanished inside.  
  



	6. Research

With nowhere else to go, Sherlock walked back to the station. The prints, whatever they were, had been mostly swallowed by the tide by now, but the sets closest to the station were still visible. They did end at the trapdoor, Sherlock saw. The trapdoor they had identified as a point of entry. Using his hand span as a ruler, he measured each print was about 80 cm wide, with a frilly edge to it. Sherlock did a brief consultation of his woefully limited in-head bestiary for hooves of this size but came back empty. Any sea creature he knew either didn't have limbs or was far smaller. This was more like the flat foot of an elephant, ringed with fur or tentacles, but a three-legged one, and the single foot was arranged centrally. No animal he knew had such a symmetry. A cruel hoax then? It did seem awfully elaborate for a hoax. Sherlock could imagine that using a trash can, rope, and several volunteers, he might be able to produce such a set of prints. But he hadn't seen anyone on the island, and neither had John.

John. It seemed curious that John had been driven to the extent of panic Sherlock had seen by a set of giant foot prints. There had to be more to this.  
Well, he thought, looking back at the prints, maybe a bit of panic might have been called for indeed. Whatever made these had to be - gargantuan.  
Just before Sherlock rose, he caught a whiff of something unpleasant, something inorganic and vile, like welding. It seemed to emanate from the prints. Sherlock would have given both kidneys for a mass chromatograph. What kind of lab was this? He'd have to have a word with Mycroft about research funding. That did, however, trigger a memory, and he decided to have another look at the journals.  
  
Inside, everything was how he had left it.   
"Hello, smart snail", he said to the octopus John had taken a liking to. He could have sworn the animal waited for John to come back, it seemed to watch the space behind him intently.  
"He's sulking", he told it. "I hurt his feelings."  
The octopus responded by rippling its skin. Sherlock picked up the journals he had already read and tried to remember which one had been the one his subconscious had tried to point out to him. It had something to do with tides. High tides. So possibly one of the later ones, one from... from almost a month ago. It was almost full moon again, and for some reason, that seemed significant to Sherlock. They'd have a spring tide the day after tomorrow. Why was that significant? While he thought about that, his fingers had found the part he had searched for almost by themselves, and he read the side note, written in an almost illegible scrawl:  
  
 _Saw the marks on the beach again. Same thing made them. Closer this time. Martha insists it's harmless. Not sure. It is big._  
  
Not the entry he wanted, the one he wanted had a sketch to go with it. He flipped through the books and found the entries from the full moon before that. And there it was. A drawing. Clearly, drawing hadn't been the author's forte, but this had been significant enough for him to try. Sherlock recalled how he had dismissed this the first time he'd seen it because it seemed like a doodle or maybe concept art for a very rough graphic novel by someone with very little talent. It depicted a line of tracks on the beach, the sea a rough line at the horizon, the moon full above it, and a double row of tracks, one to the station and one back, imprinted in the sand. No concept art then, but a scientist trying to make sense of what he'd seen. It included notes: "Width 75 76 64 depth varies but very deep must weigh TONS!!!"  
On the next page, he had drawn what Sherlock, on his first read, had taken for one of these tasteless and offensive elephant foot stools, just bigger and framed with something like a ring of thick fur or tentacles. "IT'S HERE!!!" shouted the note next to it. "Cthulhu awakens! No, j/k. If it's something new I'll name it after Martha"  
  
The real story, Sherlock found, was in the side notes, not in the actually very boring account of sea life and bacterial content. He snorted at the cheesy metaphor on life in general and skimmed them:   
  
_"Setting up camera, it comes up at full moon."_

_"If this is some sort of scam Martha I'll kill you I swear (I know you read this love you!!!)"_

_"Nothing on camera. Camera fried! Trying film next time."_

_"Fried my computer, too. There you go internet."_

_"(If this is a hoax...)"_

_"I checked theres a legend here of things from the sea we have our own loch ness monster haha"_

_"Truro tells us to leave. Not really an option. What do we tell our supervisors, sorry, saw a monster, had to come back?"_

_"Besides, this is big. Pun intended."_

_"Nothing this time. More marks, nothing on camera. Full moon in three weeks. Bummer."_

_"Martha thinks it's related to the glow in the sea wish we had scuba gear"_

_"(too far out anyway)"_

_"What does something that size eat?"_

_"And how does its locomotion work?"_

_"How does it even breathe? Gills? I think I can hear it breathe."_

_"And what if it's just inside our heads. Noooooooooo. LOL"_

_"Whoever reads this later will think I'm an idiot now"_

_"I wonder how deep it is out there."_

  
For some time, the side notes were useless doodles and small poems (or so Sherlock thought), more like endless streams of thought such as:  
  
 _"Who wakes the sleeper who weaves the wreath of curdled dreams"_  
  
or  
  
 _"around the everlasting wrack where phosphorescence dances among the fronds touching the everlasting night Who wakes the sleeper who wakes the world below the pustulating skies"_  
  
...which Sherlock found rather dark and lacking in rhyme and punctuation, even for a PhD student without access to his internet porn collection. And then, nothing for weeks, until the thing made its appearance and triggered another stream of bad poetry and frantic attempts to capture it on film. Never seemed to work. Increasingly desperate attempts followed:

_"Tried to leave bait, doesn't seem to eat fish. Martha thinks blood. Trying to get some pig blood next time."_

_"Pig blood didn't do it. It stomped around in it, the smell is unreal."_

And then, during the new moon two weeks ago:

_"I think we have its attention now. Wonder if thats good thing."_  
  
Sherlock sat back and stapled his fingers. Next to him, the octopus had heaped shells in front of its den and arranged them according to size.  
"Would you like to play deduction? I bet you're almost as good as a skull."  
It settled in front of the glass and absently tossed a snail.  
"I take that as a yes. So, what do we have? A deserted island. Gruesome murder at high tide. Absolutely no traces of forced entry, no DNA traces or finger prints that hint to someone else here on this island. Suicide, you say? I don't think so. The state of the bodies doesn't support that conclusion.  
"It's as though something came in here, unheard, unseen, without a trace, ripped them apart, and then disappeared the way it came."  
The ominous silence that followed was punctuated by the swell of the sea.   
"They tried to keep something out, barricaded themselves in the only room without windows and without sea access. But it came at them anyway. They must have believed it came from within this room."  
He pointed at the octopus who lay half buried in the sand, somehow giving the impression of being utterly content and relaxed. "It was you, wasn't it." With that, he flopped into the chair next to the tank and studied the animal. "No, you're pretty sweet. And not nearly strong enough. You'd have to be at least..." His voice trailed off as he made the connection with the prints outside. If they had been prints. And with whatever John had seen. An animal? No, that would have left a trace inside the building. Some kind of machine?  
"But it did leave a trace", Sherlock said, picking up the fish scale he'd found. "Where do you think this came from? No idea? Neither do I."  
He turned it between his fingers, and maybe because it warmed in his hand or maybe because he paid more attention this time, he noticed a faint scent. Certainly fishy and foul, but also something else, some underlying inorganic smell like overheated toaster. "A huge, burning thing with fish scales and three legs", he mused. "Well. When you have eliminated the impossible..."  
Sherlock toyed with the notepad John had left behind, and he couldn't help it, the words sprang at him, he read them almost against his will. And there was that latest entry, written in John's messy script and strangely smudged:  
  
 _"beware the sleeper and the goat beware the creeper and the kelp dance phosphorescent desolation a glutton moon will break the bonds the black goat's thousand young skitter in the depths the many-handed will be freed"_  
  
Whatever happened to John, he thought, it was still happening. "Well", Sherlock told the octopus, "I should probably go and have a look at our mutual friend."  
  



	7. Don't say my name

Sherlock knew a direct approach rarely worked with John, and he also knew John was still sulking when he arrived at the lighthouse and found John's bedroom door closed. He knew he'd hurt his feelings somehow though he didn't quite understand why. He'd tried to stick to a scientific viewpoint because anything else would have resulted in unnecessary panic and aggravated John's fear. Surely it wasn't his fault John was so affected.   
But John worked that way, and because of that, he had done his very best to whip up an actually pretty decent-all-things-considered dinner, the smell of which had extracted John from his den, and he had make excellent tea, which was cooling in front of an irritatingly absent-minded John. When his peace offerings went unnoticed, he cleared his throat and went for it. "John? Please, just tell me."

John's gaze was unfocused when he looked up, as if he'd been summoned from outer space. His eyes briefly skimmed across Sherlock's face and then stopped just above his brow. John frowned. His gaze seemed stuck, focusing on a point just over Sherlock's head. Irritated, Sherlock turned around, but behind him was just wall, unremarkable, whitewashed. When he looked back at John, John wore an expression of incredulous horror.

"What is it?" he asked, trying to sound very calm, and failing. "What do you see?"

John avoided his eyes, kept them on the spot just above Sherlock's head. His knuckles went white where he grabbed the seat cushion. Sherlock noticed the sweat on John's brow and his short, shallow breath. Was he ill?

"John. Look at me."

But John just kept staring at - at what? "What do you see?"

"Your hair", John managed. "It's writhing."

Instinctively, Sherlock's hand went to his head, but of course, his hair wasn't moving on its own. Delusions? Sherlock reached across the table to feel John's brow, but his friend drew back, eyes wild with fear.

"Okay. John. I want you to drink your tea. It's just tea. Drink it, and I'm sure you'll feel better."

John's eyes flitted to the cup of tea and back to Sherlock. Or his hair. This wouldn't do. Sherlock sighed. "I hope you know what you're making me do here", he said and rummaged around in John's jacket by the door for the woolen cap he knew would be in there, and put it on, dragged it over his apparently writhing hair to his ears. He felt ridiculous. But it seemed to be working. Like with everything, Sherlock thought, you only miss it when it's gone. The change in John was abrupt, his eyes cleared and his sanity returned within heartbeats. He blinked once, then rapidly several times, and Sherlock noticed John hadn't blinked at all for the longest time.

"Better?"

John nodded and then, choked: "I- I don't know what happened."

"Do you have a fever?"

"Something is happening, Sherlock."

"That is painfully obvious."

"It's something other. It's not of this world."

"Don't be absurd."

"I think whatever killed the scientists is still here, and it's coming for us."

"John."

"I know how that sounds. I'm not insane. Well. I might be. But I know it's no longer safe here. We have to get away from here."

"Not until we know what-"

"I've seen it. What killed them. I've seen it."

"What did you see?"

John wet his lips and struggled for words, brow knit. "It was... It was as if I could only see part of it, as if the rest of it, and a massive rest at that, was hidden in another dimension. It condenses here. Do you see? I couldn't look at it, I knew it would sense me."

"You couldn't look at it, but you saw it was a multidimensional being."

"Don't do that, Sherlock."

"Do what?"

"I know how it sounds."

"But you know, that would actually make sense, it would explain how it got into the room when all the doors were locked. That is a pretty neat explanation. But how did it leave the tracks?"

"Please. Sherlock. I know. Don't tell me it makes sense, that makes it even worse. You, of all people. It's one thing when I lose my mind, but you-"

"John", Sherlock said and absently pulled the cap from his head, "I think you should lie down and rest. Tomorrow, we'll go back and we'll-" He stopped, because John had paled, his eyes frozen on a spot above Sherlock's brow. "Is it moving again?"

John nodded.  
  
  
Sherlock wasn't superstitious. Still, when he readied himself for bed, he found he couldn't look in the mirror. He brushed his teeth with that ridiculous cap still on, avoiding the mirror, but still, he saw himself out of the corner of his eyes, a pale figure with a wool cap. Sherlock spat and rinsed and thought how utterly, utterly ridiculous this was. He straightened and looked. Nothing strange, nothing out of the ordinary. Just Sherlock with a cap and traces of toothpaste. He put a hand to his head and felt the cap, felt the thick curls underneath. Ridiculous. A disgrace for any thinking person. With one quick motion, he pulled the cap off his head and kept his eyes on himself in the mirror long enough to see the expression of dread on his own face when his hair did writhe and uncoil, just once, before it settled in its usual overgrown mess and was still. "See", he said, "Nothing to it. Nothing at all." Why he stood transfixed and looked at his reflection, just looked, he couldn't really say.  
  
  
  
Sherlock woke, uncharacteristically, when dawn had come and gone. He must have been truly tired to sleep this long. He shuffled into the bathroom and found the electrical boiler had indeed provided enough warm water for a hot shower. Sherlock had half expected John to rise while he was in the shower, but he was still fast asleep when Sherlock looked in on him.  
Sherlock was torn. On one hand, John obviously needed sleep, on the other, Sherlock needed tea, and there was still a double murder waiting for him. Surely the need for tea and conclusion outweighed John's need for sleep. He stood in the doorway and watched him, unsure what to do. John looked like he was very far away and had left his shell behind. Sherlock decided to wake him. "John? John. Wake up."  
He twitched and stirred, then opened his eyes, but they were empty, and the life returned to them very gradually.

"John."

"Hm?"

"Where are you?"

"I'm right here."

"No, you're not. John."

"Right here, Sherlock."

"What do you see?"

"I see the ocean."

"You cannot see the ocean from here."

John didn't know what to say to that, because clearly, he could, so he repeated: "I see the ocean."

"Well, then, what do you see?"

John watched and listened for a while, but the sounds and shapes bled into each other and made no sense, and when one sentence ended, he had forgotten what it had started with. It was all very dream-like, he thought. A dream. There was a dreamer.

"I want to wake up", he said.

"Does the ocean say that, or is that you speaking?"

A valid question, John thought. He listened to the breath of the ocean. Sherlock's voice was far away.

"Wake up, John, please. Wake up. John -"

"Don't say my name", John whispered. "It listens."

  
Sherlock had to admit he was mildly - terrified. Yes. Terrified. He told himself that as long as he could identify that feeling, he could catalogue and file it away and it would be gone, but even as he kept repeating that mantra, he didn't quite believe it. Terror drove him away from John and into the small kitchen where they had left their meagre provisions. Coffee. Strong coffee. That would set John right. He had the absent look of someone under hypnotic suggestion, but Sherlock knew John wasn't susceptible to that. He'd tried it often enough. So what was it? Poison? Something in the water? But they ate and drank the same things. A disease? Fungus? Virus? John didn't exhibit any symptoms aside from his fascination with the sea, and that wasn't consistent with any disease Sherlock knew.  
Coffee. Strong coffee. A stimulant. That would make him snap out of it.   
  
Sherlock's hands shook as he readied the machine and prepared coffee. Terrified. Yes. That's exactly what this was. The had to leave. Today. Today at low tide, case solved or not. With John's erratic behaviour, he couldn't rule out anything. Might even be something organic, like meningitis. He'd get coffee into him, pack anything relevant and then, as soon as the tide was low, they'd cross and call a helicopter.   
With that settled and the coffee percolating, he marched into John's room. John was still asleep. At least his eyes were closed. Sherlock sat down on the bed next to him and watched him. He'd heard people looked younger when they slept, but John didn't. He wore a deep frown and his eyes were shadowed. "Hey, John", he said, and laid a hand on John's head. "I made coffee." John stirred, his head moving against Sherlock's hand. Strange, Sherlock thought, how fragile that felt, everything John was here below his hand. He moved his fingers through John's hair. "John. Wake up." John did open his eyes then, but it was the same absent look on his face as before. Sherlock threaded his arm around John and dragged him upright and out of bed and manhandled him into the kitchenette and onto a chair. He sat a mug of coffee before him and talked him into taking a sip, then another, and when John had finished the mug, the light had returned to John's eyes.  
  
"Thank you."

"We'll pack and leave this place today, John."

"Yes." John shivered. "Thank you."

"John."

"Yes."

"I believe you."

John flinched, but then smiled. "Not sure if that makes it better or worse."

"Almost a full sentence. That's more like it."

"Sherlock. I need to get out of here."

"I know. We will."


	8. Don't look

John insisted on coming along to the station even though Sherlock found that was a horrible idea. With their minds set on leaving today, their main goal was to gather all the evidence and bring it with them to the mainland. Sherlock's hopes of finding the murderer were dwindling, but he wasn't one to give up. Together, they catalogued the journals and the specimens, John fed the octopodes, went through the cupboards and lockers for more clues, and packed their backpack. They were busy, and in the confines of the station, they didn't notice daylight came and went. Sherlock discovered dusk had fallen when he set John's backpack outside the station door.

"John?"

"Yeah", John yelled back from inside the station.

"How do you feel about hiking across the sea floor at night?"

"Is that a trick question?"

"No, it's late - we'll have to catch low tide at nine pm."

"Well, we'll have the moon, right?"

"There's a cloud layer rolling in."

"Do we have a choice?"

Sherlock weighed the options, staying on the island where, truth be told, nothing bad had happened to them, against walking across the mudflats in the dark. Curiously, the mudflats won.

"Not really, no."

"Then I feel outright enthusiastic about walking in the dark."

"Three hours until peak low tide."

"Tickled, even."

"Now you're overdoing it."

"Sorry", said John, his head poking out of the station door to grin at Sherlock, "I know that's your territory."  
  
And right then, everything happened at once. To Sherlock, standing outside the station, it sounded like a gong had been struck, like the entire structure of the station ached and reverberated, and he caught one brief glance at John's pale face before he was gone, the station door closed. Sherlock dashed up the stairs and against the door, but it didn't budge, and for a moment he hammered at the unyielding metal before he realized how futile that was. He stepped backwards to see, find a point of entry, but what he saw was some kind of warping, as if the station itself bent under a tremendous weight. The lab part, the part on stilts, bowed down to the sea, metal protesting, and the smell of burning metal and of fish and brine and death was overpowering. Sherlock couldn't see what caused this even when he stepped back and ran, ran around the station to see, to find it, to find a way in to rescue John because this, this was all that mattered at this moment, and every bit of scientific curiosity he might have felt earlier was gone.  
"John!" he yelled, cursing under his breath that they hadn't un-shuttered the windows, rendering this station into an excellent mouse trap, a tuna can for some giant cat that didn't need a can opener.

"John!" he screamed again. And then it was gone. The structure didn't even pop back to its old state, it had been bent in one moment and straight in the next. An illusion, Sherlock thought, bent space, but no, he'd heard the protest of metal. He ran towards the station door, but right then and there he saw it - one trail of tracks leading from the water to the station. One trail, not two. He scrambled back, his body wiser than his brain, and then it was upon him, a massive, lumbering nothing, a displacement of air and reason right in front of him, something he refused to see, obviously, because he didn't see anything but the station and the beach and the indigo sky and the slow formation of a second set of tracks right in front of him. He felt the air whirl and whoosh where the beast passed, the overpowering smell and its wrongness and saw the sand twirl as if from a million cilia where this something touched the sand. And then it reached the sea and was gone.  
  
Time must have started at some point, and Sherlock realized he must be breathing still, though that was hard to believe. He gathered himself on hands and knees and almost fell into the depression the beast had made in its passing, the pit filled with a clear substance that sublimated before his eyes and was replaced by sand. He gathered himself and ran up the stairs to the station, and finally, the door gave. The lights were still on, and nothing had changed. Where was John? Sherlock didn't dare to call out and just ran from room to room, looking for, if he was honest with himself, John's mutilated body. There was little hope this thing had left him here alive.  
But John was gone. The lab was the last place he looked - when the attack came, John had been at the other end of the station, and he doubted he had made it as far as the lab. Sherlock slumped down in his chair. No. No. He hadn't looked everywhere. And he hadn't found a body. John must be somewhere. Maybe the beast had taken him with it? Sherlock almost laughed at the idea. A moment ago, he wouldn't have allowed the notion such a beast existed, and now he thought it had abducted his friend?  
A motion at the edge of his field of view made him look up. The octopus.  
"Hello, little snail", Sherlock said. The octopus approached the glass, and then, very carefully, expressed a glaring red and white pattern. "Danger", Sherlock murmured. That had to mean danger. In a split second, the animal turned a drab green and brown and glared at him. There was no other way to say that. It glared. Then, it vanished into its cave in a whirl of tentacles and web, only to re-emerge a second later. "That was 'hide'. Wasn't it? Danger? Hide? Now?" The animal picked lazily at a half-eaten shrimp. "Okay. So not now. No danger now." Sherlock processed that and had an epiphany. "Oh. Oh! You are a smart snail. Where did he go?"  
But the octopus was too busy eating to humour Sherlock. There was only one place big enough for a human anyway, and Sherlock ripped the locker doors open until he opened the last one and found his friend inside. It's always the last one, Sherlock thought as John spilled from the locker, bleeding from a head wound and obviously unconscious.

John woke very gradually. He could have sworn there was a cool, long hand on his brow at some point, but when he was fully conscious, Sherlock sat at the tiny desk, bowed over a leather-bound journal. John tried to lift his head but fell back, groaning. Sheesh, but this did hurt. Sherlock, as always, the most attentive man on the planet, crossed the distance between them in two great strides and knelt down beside John.

"Don't move too much. I think you might have a concussion."

"What happened?"

"You hit your head."

"No, I mean - before."

Sherlock looked at him with one of the clinical gazes he usually reserved for specimens, and John felt himself shrivel a bit. But then Sherlock smiled, a sceptical, insecure smile that scared John more than he was ready to admit. Because that was the smile Sherlock only smiled when they were alone and Sherlock was out of his depth.

"I was hoping you could provide insight on that."

"I don't know. There was something. Something big. I hit my head, and then I woke up here."

"You probably won't remember anything from before for a while, if ever."

"Well, that's reassuring."

"Trust me, I'm certainly as impatient about this fact as you. No, more so, actually." The smile turned to a smirk. John felt Sherlock's fingers on his temple, probing the wound very gently. "Any strange sensations, John? Feeling dizzy? Nauseous? Seeing double images?"

"No. Just a bad headache."

"Let me know if it gets any worse."

John nodded and closed his eyes. He was so very, very tired, and his body felt like he had spent the entire day playing rugby.

"Sleep", Sherlock said. "It's late. I'll stay up and watch over you."

And that, John thought, was the loveliest thing anyone had ever said to him after he had received an injury. He smiled in the general direction of Sherlock's voice and drifted off.  
  
  
Sherlock was confident to let John sleep. He had sounded coherent, and his pupil response was fine. In fact, this was the most coherent he had sounded ever since they'd stepped off that helicopter. With one last glance back at John, who had curled up on the narrow bed, he ducked back into the living room and rummaged around for blankets. He picked a soft brown blanket, gathered a second, thicker one for warmth, and carefully wrapped John first with the soft fabric, then throwing the coarser, warmer rug over him. John didn't wake, but he stirred briefly and sighed a content sigh. It was like watching a glacier melt, Sherlock thought, John uncurled, unfolding into the warmth unconsciously, and a warm calm settled over Sherlock. This was it. He had to keep him safe. The case, for once, was secondary. Getting John out of here, safe and sane, was more important than anything else. He'd let him rest, and tomorrow morning, they'd leave. Tomorrow, they had to leave, Sherlock knew with a sudden gut-wrenching certainty, because that night the moon would be full, and then it would be too late.  
  
True to his promise, Sherlock didn't sleep that night. Even if he had been tired, he wouldn't have been able to because the night was full of noises, some only half-heard and suggestive, and those were the worst. He kept an eye on John, who slept uneasily. At the first sign of daylight, he prepared a last sandwich for both of them (curious, he thought, that was so very much John's division that he felt like he'd abandoned him somehow) and then got John ready to travel. Outside, the clouds had thickened overnight, and there was a glow on the choppy water Sherlock didn't like. The tide receded almost reluctantly. They'd leave as soon as there was a hint of dry land between the two islands - even though this was supposed to be a spring tide, Sherlock didn't quite trust the water to do what the moon told it to.  
  
  
John wasn't the most accommodating person this morning, his head clearly troubling him. Sherlock knew he should be resting, but that was no option. He all but dragged him down the path and past the station when John dug his heels in.  
"Wait. Sherlock, wait", John wheezed. "The animals, I need to-"  
"John, we can't-"  
"I have to, Sherlock, I have to."  
Sherlock gave in, thinking it would be faster if he helped John instead of dragging him across the mudflats by force. John made a bee-line for the tanks, and Sherlock, knowing what John wanted, drew the bolts and opened the trapdoor. The tide still lapped at the stilts. John had the absent look on his face Sherlock knew so well by now and reached down into the first tank, offering what Sherlock could only describe as a lift. Incredibly, the animal understood and climbed on his arm, clung to him with all eight arms and didn't let go until John lay flat on the floor and reached down to the sea, and then it dropped itself into the water without another flash. One by one, they went down the hatch and into freedom. Only then did John stand, eyes ablaze, happier than Sherlock had seen him in a long time. "Come", he said. "We need to run."  
  
  
Sherlock didn't like it - he couldn't even tell if the tide was coming in or going out any more, and every sensible human being wouldn't try to pass the bay at this time. With John still concussed and slow, the likelihood of them being overtaken by the water was very high, and then, the ground would get softer and softer, and eventually, they might get stuck. The water was icy cold, and if they didn't make it to ground before they were immobilized by the cold and the mud, the current would drag them out to sea. Any sensible human would wait it out, Sherlock thought. But still, here he was, his arm around John's waist, half to drag John, half to stabilize himself, the two of them fused into a clumsy four-legged creature shuffling frantically across the sea floor. Not totally unlike a deformed crab.  
John faltered and stiffened next to him, and Sherlock dragged him closer by instinct, realizing only then John had turned around, had his eyes on the sky behind them, and they were wide and panicked. "What is it?" panted Sherlock, plodding on, his friend suddenly dead weight where he held his waist. "Do you see something?"  
"Don't turn around", John said, and the tone of it made Sherlock's blood freeze in his veins. "Whatever you do. Don't look."  
Dread won over Sherlock's curiosity, and he kept his eyes on the other side of the bay, on the island where they'd find shelter and people and safety. Though from what, he didn't know, didn't want to know, and that was scary in itself. John stood rooted to the ground, staring at something behind them, eyes wide, face frozen in unblinking terror. Sherlock took him in what could have been an embrace or a slow tackle and shoved and dragged him and shuffled across the sea floor that got wetter and heavier by the second, coaxing John to walk backwards as fast as he could because he wouldn't turn, wouldn't tear his gaze away from what he saw behind them, Sherlock trying to ignore the wide-eyed fear, trying not to see the reflection in John's eyes where structures from a nightmare folded and unfolded, because if he saw it, really saw it, he would have to look, and they'd both be frozen and the tide would take them. John's breathing was ragged and fast from fear and exhaustion, and Sherlock heard hints of words muttered under his breath, half-whispered mentions of eyeless horrors and shapeless dancers and the thousand young born in fission and absorbed again in an endless dance of life and death. The icy water went up to Sherlock's calves now, the trek was difficult, and the other shore so far away. He gritted his teeth and plodded on.  
  
He saw the boat only when it was almost upon them. By then, they'd slowed to a crawl, up to their thighs in icy water, buffeted by the waves, and Sherlock wouldn't have been able to drag John for much longer, though what he'd done instead, he couldn't even think about. Without even looking, he shoved John into the boat, barely noticing the helping hands on the inside, and dragged himself inside laboriously. Only then did he recognize Truro, their host, who immediately turned the boat and rowed to shore, his eyes steadfastly on nothing else but the bottom of his little boat. Sherlock pulled John upright and was shocked how unresponsive he was, and with his fingers cold and without sensation, he couldn't even feel his pulse. But by then, Truro had already beached the boat and tied it to a pole and then helped the two disembark. Between the two of them, they dragged John inside the lodge.  
  



	9. Older than Humanity

The lodge was so warm and dry Sherlock felt like crying. Truro all but dropped them in front of the fireplace and reappeared a moment later with towels, jogging pants and dry tees. "We can't stay here", he announced, wrestling John out of his soggy clothes. How that had come to be a common occurrence, Sherlock thought, removing his own trousers with unresponsive fingers. "I concur", he said, "What's the fastest way to mainland?"  
Truro snorted. "No. What I mean is we can't stay here. In this part of the building." He towelled John dry and helped him into dry clothes, then picked him up and motioned for Sherlock to follow.

"This is where we go", Truro announced, kicking at a door that squeaked when it opened. "It's the oldest part of the inn."

"I can see that", Sherlock replied. "A chapel?" The low, massive walls were oppressive, and though they hadn't climbed any steps, Sherlock got the impression of being underground. Or under water, for that matter. All sound was muffled. Several benches surrounded a circular altar.  
Truro chuckled. "It's much, much older than Christianity."  
"You knew about this."

With great care, Truro set John down on one of the benches. John seemed to regain some of his wits, at least enough to stay upright, which Sherlock found encouraging.  
"Of course, Mr. Holmes. Everyone here knows about this."

For the first time, Sherlock looked at Truro, really looked at him, and there, in the slightly protruding eyes and the weak chin partly hidden by hipster beard and glasses, was a peculiar family resemblance presumably common to certain inhabitants of these islands, something he had heard furtive whispers of and disregarded as superstition. Sherlock took a step back.

"No, Mr. Holmes, it's not what you're thinking. My part of the family has broken with that particular tradition long ago. But that doesn't keep Them from coming."  
He looked at the ceiling with a dubious expression Sherlock didn't find encouraging. "We should be safe here. Help me light the fire."  
Sherlock was reluctant to light a fire here, especially to light one in the circular mound in front of the altar, but he could see John needed a fire. They were both cold. With the fire going, the place lost all resemblance to a Christian place of worship and became something far older indeed. Alcoves held things that seemed to move in the flickering light or didn't hold what one thought they should, the black crevices leading somewhere else entirely because of that. When Truro reached into a canvas bag, Sherlock flinched and wished he had brought a knife at the very least. Truro saw and laughed. "You're not convinced. Mr. Holmes, if I had wanted to sacrifice you, I would have left you outside in the tide land. To drown, and then to be taken. That, as you no doubt know, has been the traditional means of execution ever since man sat foot here. And before that even. Here," he said, "I brought biscuits and a thermos. Tea?"

"I'll pass. I don't eat on cases."

"Shame."

"When you say the traditional means of execution - what do you consider the modern means of execution? Dismemberment?"

"Is that an accusation?"

"A mere question. Call it curiosity. I've never dealt with - someone like you before."

"As I said, I no longer practise the old rites."

"Maybe the old rights practised you."

Truro sat back and gazed into the flames. "My family was given a great gift. Some call it the Gift of the Apple. From the biblical Tree of Knowledge? Ah, I see, of course you're familiar. When the Snake came to the Garden, my family ate and gained knowledge." He waved his hand dismissively when Sherlock laughed at that. "That is rubbish of course. Superstition. They made us, constructed us the way they wanted us. To make us more useful slaves. We don't feel the existential angst you do when we see them. We were made so that we didn't fall into the same stupor as your friend here does, rendering him little more than meat for their lockers. When we gaze upon them, we still retain a modicum of free will and intelligence. So, no, I cannot be forced into this. Even though my family's blood has been diluted through the years, we're still free." He picked absently at his mug and took a sip. "Besides, I have an alibi. I was in London when they died. I live there in winter. With my boyfriend, who is a designer and misses me greatly."

"But you do know what happened."

"I can assume."

"Then assume away."

For a long time, Truro didn't speak. Then he sat the mug on the bench and threw another log at the fire. It burned blue and green. Driftwood, of course.

"You saw their experiments. It's very simple. They woke the Kraken."

Sherlock would have laughed at that, thinking of the friendly octopodes within their tanks, and the benign behavioral experiments they'd gone through. But he did recall how John had reacted to them and they to him.

"You don't think it's ludicrous?"

"John here did extensive studies on feeding behaviour of octopodes", Sherlock said. "They are messy eaters. The pattern I saw is consistent with a big animal ripping them apart, an animal encountering very little resistance."

"They were paralysed by then."

Sherlock looked at John, who was paralysed even now, leaning against a column, eyes closed.

"Yes. It would have taken him too." Truro stood. "Help me lock the doors."

"Lock the door?"

"Of course. Can't you hear?"

Sherlock strained to hear, and yes, there it was, a shuffling, rolling sound, wet and gargling and pumping like a badly maintained generator.

"Yes. That noise. That's him. The Sleeper. Here, place these in the nooks right there." Truro handed him several pieces of material that looked like polished driftwood, polished from years of use, he thought, and dotted with impressions that seemed to be - etched. only when he handled it he noticed it wasn't wood, but stone - fossilized wood turned into stone, immensely ancient. And dotted with indentations that seemed to regular and too complex to be natural. His impulse to make a drawing or a rubbing faded when the noise outside increased in volume. "Mr. Holmes. Please. Hurry."

"What do these do?"

"I have no first hand knowledge of that. I'm not here at this time of the year usually. Nobody is. Why do you think that is?"

"But you do know that these go there."

"Yes. Every member of my family learns that. And other things."

"I am starting to see that."

The dotted pieces of fossilized wood fit the nooks perfectly despite their age. "Just how old is this place?"

"The original chapel was already here when the first monks came. They tried to re-purpose it many times, but it reverted as many times. In the end, they just slapped a cross on the door and declared it a chapel when it really wasn't. But the foundations are older than humanity."

"That's impossible. The continents move, this place would sink and rise with the-"

"Have you seen anything over these last few days that is in line with science? I have not."

Sherlock had a closer look at the wood. What he had thought was wood was in fact fossilized horsetail. With inscriptions. This was like discovering that the Barney the Dinosaur plushie in your kid's collection was an actual, taxidermied dinosaur. He stared at the log, incredulous, until Truro snatched it off him and placed it in its correct nook. "There. That should do it."

"You didn't do anything to the door."

"It doesn't need that door. It would take the other ones."  
  
At that point, with John slumped against the pillars of some ancient temple, Truro nudging and poking pieces of fossilized horsetail, a shuffling and grinding noise approaching outside, Sherlock decided he needed that tea after all. A mug of tea and a biscuit and cheap jogging pants that were too short and too wide for him and the entire situation was so ridiculous Sherlock had to laugh while drinking and only barely avoided choking, and he was so absorbed in the unreality of the situation that he didn't notice at first. When he did, his mug was half empty, and he dropped it, his hands suddenly too weak to hold it. He watched it shatter on the ancient stones in horror just as his world tilted and he hit the floor next to it, his limbs completely unresponsive, and knew he had been poisoned. Unable even to speak, he could just roll his eyes at Truro, who stopped pretending to fiddle with the door and strode over to where John and Sherlock slumped, one barely conscious, the other drugged. He drew a knife, short and well-worn and wicked sharp.

"You should have eaten the crabs", he said. "No, they were fine. Well. They do get deformed when one of them is around. But otherwise... They were just a little - contaminated. Would have given you food poisoning, nothing more, and you would have had to go back to the mainland. Or you would have arrived at Samson later, after the full moon. My fault. I should have whipped up some desert, eggs are always problematic."  
Sherlock watched in horror as Truro walked over to John and dragged him upright, then cut away his jumper with one practised motion. "But no." Truro produced a large cup from somewhere, something that looked as ancient and disfigured as anything he'd seen in this chapel, and its purpose was clear.  
"Now it knows you. Now it demands a sacrifice. This is your fault, Mr. Holmes. Your fault alone."  
With that, he set the cup in front of John, whose head hung limp almost on his chest.

"But I'm not cruel, Mr. Holmes", Truro said lightly, "You don't have to watch this. While your breathing won't stop, you'll still lose consciousness. Maybe you'll even dream. It's an ancient poison my family uses for that purpose, you know, to entice dreams. It's derived from a certain kind of deep sea fish. Unfortunately, I'm all but immune to it by now, and it's expensive, so... but I babble, and there is very little time."

He perked up and listened to the pounding outside. To Sherlock, it sounded like a storm was descending, a storm housing immeasurable entities that breathed in unison, and he didn't know what was worse, the sound of the breathing storm outside inhaling on them, or the man with the knife looming over John. He pondered the idea even as time stretched and stretched and the knife descended and John's chest seemed to rise to meet it and the churning breathed foul and vast and massive like something ancient that had been awoken and didn't like it because it had horrible morning breath.  
  
  
  
Sherlock woke with a start. Well, to say he woke with a start is an understatement. He woke to sunlight in his face, the screams of gulls, and the faint benign whoosh of the sea, and that shocked him into motion. He didn't know where he was, and flailed around in bed until he had untangled himself and stood next to it, disoriented, panting, a particularly nasty dream slowly receding. He forced himself to breathe, to calm down, to fight the uncharacteristic panic and disorientation. He felt like he had slept a long time, and indeed, the sunlight bathing his room had a pre-noon quality to it. A light breeze moved the curtains, the terrace doors had been left open a crack, and he could hear the surf, but for once, it didn't alarm him. Where was he? The lavish Hampton chic pointed to only one possibility: He was at Truro's inn. Alive? And where was John?  
  
John. When he had last seen him, he'd had a knife stuck in his chest. John. Sherlock ran now, panicked, darted out the door in just his underwear, trying to get his bearings, trying to find John's room, trying to remember, of only he had spent more attention when they'd checked in but John did these things and he didn't bother, and John, oh God, where was he...  
  
"Good morning, Mr. Holmes. Would you like to borrow a dressing gown?" Truro's voice, smug and amused, brought it all back, the day before, the knife, the drug, the awful noise and that stench, the stench of things swallowed alive and decaying, and with one fluid motion, Sherlock grabbed him by the throat and pushed him against the wall.  
"Sherlock!" John. That was John. John's voice, and he was upset. Who was he upset with now? Surely not Sherlock. He looked across over his shoulder, not letting go of Truro, and there he was, his John, at the breakfast table. Having - breakfast? Sherlock dropped Truro - clearly, John had to explain a few things. "John?"  
He ran over, dragged him out of his chair where he sat dressed in jeans and sweater, ran his hands over him as if he could determine if he was okay just by feeling him. But what he could tell, after all, was that he was alive, solid and warm, that he was here and apparently well, and that was so overwhelming he just drew him into a bear hug and pressed him close and would never have let him go if not for John, who, laughter in his voice, hugged him back and said: "I'm happy to see you too. Come, sit down and have breakfast. God knows I need one."

Sherlock did sit down then, eyed the sumptuous breakfast, but found he couldn't take his eyes off John. John, who munched on his toast with scrambled eggs and ham. Lots of ham.

"I saw him kill you."

"Ah, well", said Truro, setting a mug with hot water and an assortment of tea bags in front of him, "You might have been too drugged to make such an assumption."

John laughed, but Sherlock was too relieved to be irritated by Truro's attitude. "He didn't quite kill me, Sherlock. Look." He briefly exposed his arm and the bandage around his elbow. "Just drew a bit of blood."

"The ritual demands a sacrifice, but, you know, when you're an Old One, you probably can't even tell if you received five litres or five hundred millilitres. I've always found the old rituals a bit too - bloody. I make do with minimal amounts of blood."

"And that's how I woke up in a damp cellar with you out cold and an expertly dressed arm, minus a bit of blood", added John. "What exactly happened out there, Sherlock? I feel like I've been asleep for weeks."

"What do you remember?"

"I remember the sea, the station, friendly octopodes, and terror, but that only very vaguely."  
  
Truro sat down with them, buttering toast and pouring himself coffee. "What happened here, Mr. Holmes?" He didn't look at him, his casual demeanour belying the obvious threat. Sherlock looked from him to John to the door he knew now lead to something far older and more dangerous than he had ever encountered. He stapled his fingers and studied Truro, who took a bite of toast and returned the gaze, completely unafraid.  
  
"Smugglers", Sherlock announced. "A drug deal gone wrong. Researchers caught in the middle. Happens all the time."

"How did they die?"

"Drug-crazed enforcer. He left the corpses as a warning."

"Why here?"

"Obvious - nobody was supposed to be during winter. The station provides shelter from prying eyes and the police."

"Curious that a crazed enforcer didn't leave any traces. No hair, no blood, no DNA."

"The crime scene was very messy and disturbing, I do not expect the local police to be able to deal with that much gore and yet find evidence."

"You rely on police incompetence for your cover-up?"

John snorted, and that was so like John that Sherlock realized what was at stake, how much he would miss him. He didn't think John knew their survival relied on a good story. But then John said: "You wouldn't believe the incompetence we witness while working with the NSY. It blows your mind."

"Appalling", Sherlock added.

"Disgusting", John said.

"A disturbing absence of good practice and even the smallest modicum of intelligence, let alone free thought."

"Sherlock, do you think the locals would be any better?"

"I do not think so, John. And besides, who would believe the truth?"

"What is the truth?" asked John, but Sherlock decided to treat this question as rhetorical.

"The truth is what we tell the NSY." Sherlock dropped his napkin on the table as he stood and said: "Now, if you'll excuse us, Mr. Truro, John and I have bags to pack and a cab to catch."  
  
  
Clear off the island, Sherlock studied his friend, who stared out of the small window of their helicopter. It was a very different day from when they had arrived. No fog, blue skies, and the islands bathed in the waves surrounded by a halo of white foam. It looked peaceful, yet John's expression wasn't peaceful at all. Sherlock touched his arm questioningly. It took John a while to acknowledge him and even longer to hit the "speak" button on his headset. "I remember it all", he said. Sherlock nodded. Of course. He didn't know what to say to that, and thought how this had become a habit. His hand on John's arm, he was very aware of the blood in John's veins, of the blood gobbled down by a vague, ancient terror in the deep. He wanted to tell him then, tell him that he'd throw himself at anything that came from the sea (or basically anywhere to be honest), and that he'd do anything to overwrite those memories with happier ones. But he couldn't say it, and so he just squeezed John's arm, and when John turned his head to him and smiled, Sherlock suspected that would just have to do.  
  
Besides, thought Sherlock, if what Truro had said was true and there was a way to maintain a clear head around these things, then they'd find it, and they'd be back. With that, Sherlock closed his eyes and dozed, smiling, all the way to London.


End file.
